Donald Trump calls it “an abortion factory.” Ted Cruz calls it “an ongoing criminal enterprise.” Carly Fiorina calls it an organization “profiting on the death of the unborn.” And Dr. Ben Carson calls it an organization that “must be stopped from these barbaric practices.”
What do these sorts of radical comments, which become legitimized by current politicians, mean for the future of American democracy?
All four candidates are speaking about Planned Parenthood, an organization which has long been thrust into the limelight for its abortion services and which recently made headlines again for a far more devastating reason. On the day after Thanksgiving, a man entered a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood and opened fire, killing two civilians, one police officer and wounding nine others.
The incident was terrible, demoralizing and horrific. However, it was not a one-off incident. Since 1977, there have been more than 200 bombings and arson attacks at facilities that offer abortion services. In all, 11 people have been killed in anti-abortion related attacks since Planned Parenthood first hit the media. At the same time of these attacks, anti-abortion rhetoric has only grown in American politics, becoming increasingly more hateful and more brazen.
The deadly attack in Colorado Springs comes at a time when politicians have compared Planned Parenthood with the holocaust, slavery, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the leading Republican presidential candidate is calling for the organization to be stopped from its “barbaric practices.” It comes as no surprise, then, that someone may be crazy enough to take what current politicians are spewing, full heartedly embrace it and do terrible things.
Politics in the United States have become so polarized today that we have begun to legitimize outlandish and radical speech. Gone are the days where the two parties looked across the aisle, worked together and had honest, thoughtful discussions about relevant issues. Now, both sides counter the other, no matter what, and are rapidly moving further and further apart. From this movement apart comes a rise of radical speech — speech that often has no basis in fact and that is being spewed by politicians more and more regularly. In order to win votes and please their party’s electorate, politicians now find it increasingly necessary to produce more far-reaching rhetoric. To the casual observer, this outlandish speech is legitimized by the politician who is saying it and they take this radical speech as fact. This leads to debilitating effects.
A decade ago, it would have been unheard of for any politician to compare Planned Parenthood to the Holocaust. Now, nearly half of the current Republican field for president has made or supported this comparison. When prominent politicians make these far-fetched analogies, it allows the most radical anti-abortion proponents to see the opposing side as Nazis — not who they really are: normal Americans living normal American lives.
Until we stop legitimizing radical rhetoric in our politics, we will never be able to have an honest debate about abortion. We simply can’t talk about abortion and Planned Parenthood in an accurate, factual, and undemonizing way until we do so. The same goes for so many other paramount discussions that need to take place in our political system today.
American politics used to be a shining example of bipartisanship, a compromising attitude, and a political system that did so much good. Now a zero-sum-game has taken over our politics — a game where two sides feel there can be only one winner and where radical talk is the unfortunate law of the land. Until we stop legitimizing this increasingly outlandish political rhetoric, terrible events like the Colorado Springs shooting may continue to reoccur. Until our politicians can work across the aisle and lead a reasonable debate that includes the differing opinions, we may be in for a long and devastating couple of years.